Recent content by joe_bradley

Wow, that's a pretty tall order. I've found myself backed into that corner a few times - people write business-critical logic in excel, and I've wanted to pull it out and reuse it without the excel. But I'm not aware of any tools that do this. And it's never been painful enough for me to do real...

Just my $0.02 as someone who took both of Prof. Raynes class - Prof. Raynes frequently indicated his dissatisfaction with "business as usual" in finance in his classes, and you could figure as much by reading the R & R Consulting blog. I doubt any of his former students would be shocked at this...

Agreed. VC++6 is horribly out of date by today's standards. You may pick up bad habits by using old C versions. As I recall, IDE support for the STL is lousy and you'll never get Boost to compile. Both of those will be needed once you get past beginner stages.

Hi Andy, You've probably figured that there isn't a straighforward command to do this. If you are *forced* to do SQL queries to produce a "crosstab" report, you can try something like this: (excuse me if my syntax is rusty; I don't do SQL enough to know the syntax off the top of my head)...

Ah Alain, you are mistaken. The original execution, as I saw it, was brilliant. Here's how it worked circa 1998: 1. Contractor with C++ experience but no COM expertise hired to work on code maintenance. 2. Contractor, wishing to accumulate valuable buzzwords for his resume, immediately suggests...

I came neither to praise fat clients nor bury them. I just wanted to point out that it is usually IT management considerations, not technical ones, that indicate whether you use a fat or thin client. That being said, I work for an ASP so perhaps I'm biased. Also, this subject is a bit academic...

Someone above said "Americans are avoiding the [MFE] field". As a paleface midwesterner who's spent much of my life as a practicing engineer here in USA, I would say most engineers and software folk are "avoiding" the field through obscurity. Not a lot of people in technology know such a thing...

Thin client apps not the future? Hmmmm tell that to companies like Salesforce. Tell that to Microsoft, which is pushing the daylights out of Silverlight. Most programming is done within companies; it isn't shrinkwrap. Web applications have the ability to push out updates and keep everyone on...

Quanster just confirmed what everyone else has been telling me. Unfortunately, I get the idea that most MFEs (like myself) are less schooled in econometrics, market microstructure and the stuff most automated trading houses care about. One wonders if that particular market would be equally tight...

Statistics, yes. There's loads of statistics in horse racing, and naturally lots of models and experts telling you where to bet. But quant stuff? Seems you'd actually need a secondary market. Betting odds do change as the race approaches gate time, so that isn't out of the question. But I can't...

Aha, I am a Louisville native! I HAVE to like horses. You're right about the gate draw. It is absolutely ridiculous that the Derby has such a friggin' big field (20+ horses!). It throws too much luck into the draw. And of course, it makes Triple Crown winners that much rarer. Problem is, horse...

I can vouch firsthand that at least from my POV, things seem to be quite a bit stronger in Chicago than here. A lot of the openings I came across seem to be there. I will say though, that they are looking for more experienced people. One headhunter I talked to expressed that a lot of the firms...

To tack onto what Gus said, if you've got young kids (or no kids, even) then Forest Hills in Queens is a good bet as well. The neighborhood has a lot going on without being overwhelming, and there are a good number of private/parochial schools around. As far as what property costs, I have no...

Alain's answer is a truism no matter what the market conditions. However, it depends what is meant by "if you are good." Your answer does not indicate what timeframe you're talking about. The current market for newly-minted quants breaking into the business is foul. One headhunter I met with...

Hi Yuri, I know those sorts of models may sound like baby stuff... however, in the interviews the thing I kept hearing about repeatedly was execution time. If that is the case, it could very well be that the underlying models are just simple, it's just that they need them to run extremely...